We can have an argument about whether we've influenced the EU more by leaving than anything we would likely have done by staying. Granted its most dramatic impact is of a form of influence quite different to stuffy negotiations. But I won't shed a tear that we've losses the ability to have someone negotiating on our behalf that thinks a great technique is to become desperate for a piss in order to focus the mind.
This exit will probably go down in history as part of a sequence of events that came to the surface via the banking crisis and associated shit, some stuff to do with the phase of capitalism, hangovers from last century and other stuff that hasn't become that well defined and confirmed to the masses yet. I find it hard not to have mixed feelings at the moment because of course we don't know what the next steps in the sequence are yet. Some obviously hope that this is the beginning of the end for the EU, or will at least change its direction.
Personally this event hasn't completely shaken my word because the one certainty I eventually settled on for this century so far is that we have entered a volatile state and the political ground, in terms of what is considered the mainstream 'legitimate spectrum of debate' has slowly been opening up in many directions. Things the centre found unthinkable have unfolded, and there is probably more to come.
